


Shallow Waters Can't Drown Us

by say_im_good



Category: VIXX
Genre: M/M, angsty, both of them are kind of outcasts in different ways, hakyeon just wants to be loved, small town AU, taekwoon is an outcast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 07:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10986672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/say_im_good/pseuds/say_im_good
Summary: 'But in terms of living and loving, Hakyeon was a hotel, one with a two star rating due to holey sheets but a good comment added for the service. People would come, make a mess of the place, leave their scraps as memories, then go, and he expected no less after years of greeting 'guests', a mock smile on his face as they’d let loose like they were going to stay and leave all the same.'





	Shallow Waters Can't Drown Us

Taekwoon found his purpose in the boondocks, the scraps of the bustling city remaining on the outskirts where businesses had no interest in renovating for the poorer population. There was blood on the hands of half the population, the blood of boyfriends and whores, son-in-laws and children not yet born. Most of said blood was the owners’, drawn from toil and work that would never come to gain. The shallow town survived living paycheck to paycheck, hustle to hustle, and the instant pleasures were the only ones the population could afford, gossip, sex, drugs, distractions.  
   
He was born in the city, if you would believe it, because no one did that wasn’t from the countryside. He once attended a public school with bars for windows, cracking brick walls, and kids that looked years older shoving him into lockers that too-comfortably fit such a small, fragile child. He moved to the shallow small town with his mother when his father left them overnight, his mother deciding that she wanted to go back ‘home’ to the place where she herself was raised. She found comfort in the tight knit bond of a small town with everything to hide and no way to keep things hidden, being very much like that herself. No secrets left hidden meant she could cry on the shoulder of a stranger as they scolded the man who’d cheated her, the child who took so much effort to raise. Taekwoon found himself avoiding their new and somehow already pity-sodden house, but there was no disappearing in a town that kept close watch on the newcomers, even if said newcomer was the child of a former resident.  
   
He was his father’s son, they figured. He had his mother’s facial structure, her smile when he made a weak attempt into the mirror (never in public, he’d never break that wall down intentionally, knowing the consequences). When the light casted just right his hair had the same streaks of brunette as hers did, and, other than his wide shoulders, he was lithe in appearance as she was. But he was tall, his eyes were dull and slanted, and no one liked a stranger that they had to look up at to converse with. He was his father’s son because it was convenient to hate him in the place of the man who was no longer there to hear the scorns. And if anything, the shallow loved to arouse the worst in people by assuming that the worst was there all along.  
   
If he had to describe his mother, he’d compare her to a foster home, where people go to stay off the streets later to find that they’d prefer to be on the streets than there. She was a lovely woman with a lovely demeanor and venom in her pearly white smile that only Taekwoon knew of in person. He’d been jabbed with that same venom throughout his life to the point where his stoic expression and his silence were symptoms of his developed immunity. She’d groomed him like she groomed everyone who made the mistake of sauntering after her too deeply, like following a limping puppy onto a highway. People in her life were either supporters or abusers, and there would be no in between, no escape. If her motives were questioned, if her opposers were even questioned to be possibly in the right, then the person questioning her would become next on her list of people who had wronged her and therefore deserved the worst in the world. 

His mother was a victim by choice, and Taekwoon grew to hate people with lies and hatred buried under their translucent skin because of it. He hated his mother, he hated the old lady who lived across the street, peering daggers into his back every time he unlocked the door to his own house as if he weren’t welcome there. He hated the girls who wore calf-high boots the color of grime and giggled like hyenas at the prospect of gossip. He hated himself, who beneath the emotionally bulletproof vest and helmet, was the puddle of a could-have-been confident man.  
   
Taekwoon didn’t speak, and in turn, the shallow never spoke to him, fond of how he took each metaphorical hit without even attempting to get back up, licking their lips at his lack of strength, lack of dominance. He was the perfect target, and in a town with no money, good distractions, or real friends, he was the most apt entertainment. The girls would chatter about how he probably dug in their trash and smelled their old panties, the boys would try to shove him into lockers that he was now too tall and disproportionately broad-shouldered to mold to. The adults would curse him as if he were the bane of his mother’s happiness, and his mother loved to cry that he was. He spent his free time at the tiny park a minute past the Lee residence and two blocks to the left, sitting on a swing that screaked under his meager weight and hung low enough that his tree-long legs dragged along the ground. Sometimes he fell asleep on the bench nearby, or on the wood chips below that housed spiders and ants, insects like him that were somehow more comfortable to nestle with than the residents of the small town that hated him.    
   
He took notice of someone interesting halfway through his second semester of Sophomore year, someone who he’d been secretly eavesdropping on like he did with anyone else sitting nearby. Lost in his own thoughts, Taekwoon also occasionally trailed out, took in the opinions of chatty, makeup-pasted girls or freshmen with more bravado than their prepubescent bodies could keep sealed. It was a boy that caught his interest, the word ‘boy’ fitting much better than the word ‘man’ because Taekwoon would’ve admitted in another more confident life that he was beautiful. A few inches shorter than himself with a slightly more feminine frame, wider hips and a longer neck, skin made of honey and caramel and a douse of chocolate that made him appear golden when Taekwoon passed him anonymously in the courtyard. His name was Cha Hakyeon, and despite how he was never sitting alone at any given moment, Taekwoon figured that he too was an outcast.  
   
He’d first seen Hakyeon in the grocery mart eleven days after moving into town, a place as small as these boondocks being too intertwined to go longer than three months without crossing past every person at some point that lived there. Hakyeon had been standing with his mother, a woman half his height and twice his width, though that wasn’t saying anything harsh on her weight, moreso that he was small. He had his arms full of bread loaves though the cart was still empty enough to see the metal grating at the bottom, and she was shaking her head and pointing to each one as if a decision over a loaf of bread was one too calculated to just pick one and go. He was standing straight without the slouch that most kids his age would’ve taken in stubborn impatience, his head bowed just enough to cast shadows from his bangs over his eyes. Taekwoon saw past the gesture immediately, as it was something he himself did by habit at this point. Hakyeon’s eyes were almond shaped and housed a type of tired that sleep couldn’t fix, and he remembered them with unwelcomed ease when staring at the ceiling above his bed that night.  
   
Hakyeon was in his math class, and at the time Taekwoon only knew as much about him as he did about the others. Hakyeon was chatty with whoever would make the effort to talk to him, usually people who didn’t seem nearly as interested in speaking with him as he did with them. His eyes would light up, his entire body flowed into his words as if they were a story and not simply him explaining how to solve question 25 on form B. He was bad at math but didn’t seem to know it, always sharing his perspective, wanting to figure out why he got the answer he did. The girl with the leopard-framed glasses that sat to Taekwoon’s left found him annoying, and the seat behind him was traded between students on a weekly basis. Taekwoon never knew why and he never pressed to know anything more about Cha Hakyeon, despite the mildly peaked interest in how he somehow felt different than the rest of the shallow-minded, traditionally bound adversaries that Taekwoon could recognize and avoid thoughtlessly by now. But somehow, his name just kept coming up.  
   
By the end of Sophomore year, Taekwoon knew by silently overhearing countless sources that Hakyeon was one of the instant pleasures the town thrived on. Those wide hips that he’d noted by a passing glance had been encased in the eyes of many, those almond eyes were said to sparkle with gratitude at any suggestion of endearment or praise, even if obviously only spoken in-the-moment. He had heard from so many different sources how those full lips would part, how his ballad-tinged voice sounded so lovely when it was gasping for more, and Taekwoon could picture it so fluidly in his mind that sometimes he’d see Hakyeon’s supposed pleasure-induced beauty in his dreams. Hakyeon was beautiful, and he only admitted that after knowing that nearly the entire school agreed, that the ones who didn’t were simply the ones shoved into second-place by his body, the ones who couldn’t compare to his radiance. 

But in terms of living and loving, Hakyeon was a hotel, one with a two star rating due to holey sheets but three more stars added for the service. People would come, make a mess of the place, leave their scraps as memories, then go, and he expected no less after years of greeting guests, a mock smile on his face as they’d let loose like they were going to stay and leave all the same. Taekwoon watched this throughout Junior year, noticing only after a full year of living in the shallow hellhole that trying to work out the details of Cha Hakyeon was his own entertainment. Hakyeon would be holding hands with a new person by each passing month, smiling shyly up at the person who would embrace him like he was to be treasured before dropping his status to a near object level when chatting with their friends. Park Jimin, Lim Changkyun, Oh Sehun. Taekwoon remembered these names of the more recent ‘lovers’ because he felt a fire burning somewhere in his chest when he’d heard their names in the hall after they’d checked out of Hakyeon’s life and had to think for days to discover why it bothered him. They’d kiss Hakyeon’s cheek and call him ‘baby,’ then they’d pretend to sweetly watch him leave for class, soak up his smiles and childish honesty, his expressiveness, his love, right before running back to their clics and rambling on about how hard they’d fucked him behind the bleachers or how they’d convinced the ‘gullible bitch’ that they actually loved him.  
   
He was sure that Hakyeon knew, no, he was positive. Hakyeon knew; there was no way he couldn’t know. He’d gone through man after man, woman after woman, approaching them first with his heart on his sleeve, speaking kindly and smiling almost like he was paid to do so, welcoming them to his tiny hotel with the clear indication that he’d love it if they stayed forever. And they’d tear his clothes off in the bathroom stalls, stain his neck with lipstick and call him a slut when they thought he wasn’t there to hear it. Taekwoon found himself re-aiming his once self-directed anger towards the people who took the dive into Hakyeon’s love, sapped him dry, then walked away. There was plenty of people to divide the frustration amongst, and he’d glare at each of them openly, finding no consequence in them noticing his sneers because they talked shit about him and confronted him anyway, nothing would change in the fact that no one really noticed or cared about him from the start.  
   
He spent his time at school like this, pretending like he had a purpose by appointing himself as Hakyeon’s suppressed conscience, as the fear of abandonment, as the anger, the frustration that he knew had to be hidden in the other male after so long of pouring his heart out and only being taken advantage of in turn. When Park Choa pressed Hakyeon against the wall and bit hickeys into his skin, apologized for ditching him in a pouty-voice that held no commitment, Taekwoon made sure to ignore her pushes for his study materials on the upcoming test. When Kim Jiwon shoved Hakyeon into the same wall and punched the concrete beside his head, spitting through his screams at what a dirty whore Hakyeon was for those same, unwanted hickeys, Taekwoon made sure to take all of the jock’s neatly done homework from his backpack and trash it. As the weeks rolled by, he made it his duty to enforce karma on anyone who saw Hakyeon as simply something they could use to release their anger and sexual desire. And, being someone who the entire shallow population had eventually gotten bored with, he was the last person who was suspected when his acts came into view.  
   
Taekwoon had no idea why he did it. He didn’t know why he went to such a dangerous effort to shove Jeon Jungkook’s sweat-soaked jersey into Kwon Yuri’s massive purse in revenge for a person who he hadn’t even spoken a word to yet, didn’t know why his heart fluttered with glee when the football player was screaming at the rich girl who’d posted video of a clearly uncomfortable Hakyeon handcuffed and naked on her plush, king-sized bed last week. He didn’t know why he’d practiced spraying Oh Sehun’s graffiti tag night after night before finally coating the school walls with it, or why he took pleasure in the senior getting dragged into the principal’s office for the act. Any and all of Hakyeon’s abusers were his victims and he took no mercy on the people who took no mercy on Hakyeon, who refused to hide his heart in rebellion to the town’s snakelike deceit. Taekwoon would go home to a house that didn’t welcome him and lay in bed, thinking of the warm feeling of pride, of power, of joy that he felt when he saw the shocked, fearful, or confused faces of those who’d wronged the boy with sunkissed skin and nothing to conceal. He shivered at the prospect that they were getting what they deserved. It was almost an obsession, probably would’ve been if Taekwoon weren’t careful not to become one of those people himself, someone who used Hakyeon for their own means. He was strict on himself to remember that this was for Hakyeon, not for his own pleasure, not for the rush of adrenaline and strength he got every time he humiliated or screwed over one of Hakyeon’s abusers.  
   
By April of Junior year, Hakyeon hadn’t held a hand in two months, his eyes downcast, the corners of his lips rarely raising in mock happiness like they used to. Taekwoon had been excited about that; Hakyeon no longer had to fake a smile for people who would stab him in the back sooner than later. He’d seen it as a success that the school was too afraid of the cursed beauty that they’d once indulged in like parasites, and Taekwoon no longer hated himself as all of that hatred was divvied out to the snakes that he’d finally fended off. Hakyeon was free now, the shackles of exes and obligation released. No one wanted him anymore, so there was no longer a demand for him as their temporary fix.  
   
But by May, Taekwoon realized that Hakyeon wasn’t happy at all when, to his shock, the other had been shoved to his knees in the middle of the hallway, tears in his eyes after he’d begged Park Jimin to take him back and was pushed to the ground. The school had scoffed, called him a whore, someone who couldn’t live without someone to boost him up, and only then did Taekwoon realize that, by turning Hakyeon’s name into a bad-luck charm, he’d removed Hakyeon’s glorified presence that, going without, left him entirely alone. Hakyeon now cried behind the bleachers where he once kissed people who didn’t love him, he skipped class twice that week to avoid both the sneers in his direction and the feeling of being invisible that resembles suffocating that Taekwoon had grown too familiar with to recall hurts like hell. On one of his trips to the park he saw Hakyeon laying on the same bench that he himself occasionally slept on, tears sparkling on golden cheeks in the moth-speckled lamplight, a thin pocket knife laying open on his stomach, an empty bottle of cheap whiskey just barely dangling from his fingertips. He’d watched the other sleep in this state for what felt like thirty minutes before walking back to the house that would never be a home to him that he shared with the woman who would never be a mother to him, collapsing in his bed in a town that would never be welcoming to him, replicating those tears until he too had fallen asleep.  
   
The next day, he’d made up his mind, determined in his decision to change, to not be like the rest who would abandon Hakyeon the moment his presence wasn’t to their benefit. The bell announced the start to their math class, students gathered in every seat except for the ones to either side and behind Hakyeon, the other male having relocated to the back to stay hidden, his bangs cast over his eyes once more. Taekwoon stared around the room from his own seat, caught the faces of each person who had pretended to care, who had trained Hakyeon to believe that he needed their fake love, that he couldn’t live without someone at least pretending to want him. But what Hakyeon didn’t realize was that one person in the shallow town did love him as honestly as he’d loved each and every person who’d taken his hand. Taekwoon steeled himself for the step he knew would cause him to appear again, would push him back to being shoved into lockers and mocked at by groups of people who had nothing else to focus on but the misery of others. Giving himself no time to rethink an answer he’d been sure of for hours prior, he rose quickly and boldly from his seat.  
   
As he picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder, the eyes were back on him. He tensed, feeling the snakes that he’d avoided for so long detecting him again, noting his existence, scowling at the subtle memories of how they disliked him without reason. As he paced past the rows of desks and chairs, scowls and attention that was locked onto him, he steeled himself to look straight ahead rather than at his feet like he normally did, head held high because he would die before letting this stupid, shallow town believe that he was regretting his choice at the moment. Hakyeon was staring too, cautious and unsure, confused because surely he didn’t know Taekwoon had existed either, too lost in his own dilemma, not knowing that the pain he was currently suffering through was unintentionally caused by the person approaching him.  
   
Taekwoon drew out the seat of the desk right beside Hakyeon’s, dropped his bag on the floor and sat down, pulling out his notebook, his pencil, calculating each action to seem perfectly normal despite how nearly the entire room was staring in their direction now, wondering why the ‘invisible freak’ had suddenly made a show of standing and sitting next to the ‘desperate whore.’ And when he sat up from placing his supplies on the desk, Taekwoon yawned and stretched his arms before turning his head and releasing the first smile he’d ever shown to anyone besides his bathroom mirror, feeling it come naturally at the twinkle that still set in Hakyeon’s stunning eyes despite the fact that he wasn’t being praised, the confused part of his lips that was still beautiful even though he wasn’t panting or moaning, the beauty that, despite popular belief, wasn’t caused by other people’s bodies having some effect on his, the beauty that was simply Hakyeon in his natural state of existence, the natural state that no one cared about unless it was boosting their ego. He smiled at Hakyeon and felt the solid walls he’d reinforced over the course of years willingly tumbling down. A single second passed before Hakyeon’s tensed shoulders relaxed just slightly, his confusion fading into a soft, shy smile that left Taekwoon breathless, made him want to see it daily, want to be the cause of it. Those plush lips parted and the most beautiful voice rolled out from them. 

“Hi, you’re Taekwoon right? Let’s be friends.” Taekwoon had heard him say similar words to countless other people, but there was one change that made all of the difference: He actually meant it when he said ‘yes.’


End file.
